| Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922. | | | | Auras of Delight | | By Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) |
| | | BEAUTIFUL habitations, auras of delight! | |
| Who shall bewail the crags and bitter foam | |
| And angry sword-blades flashing left and right | |
| Which guard your glittering height, | |
| That none thereby may come! | 5 |
| The vision which we have | |
| Revere we so, | |
| That yet we crave | |
| To foot those fields of ne’er-profanèd snow?… | |
| And Him I thank, who can make live again, | 10 |
| The dust, but not the joy we once profane, | |
| That I, of ye, | |
| Beautiful habitations, auras of delight, | |
| In childish years and since had sometime sense and sight, | |
| But that ye vanish’d quite, | 15 |
| Even from memory, | |
| Ere I could get my breath, and whisper ‘See!’ | |
| But did for me | |
| They altogether die, | |
| Those trackless glories glimps’d in upper sky? | 20 |
| Were they of chance, or vain, | |
| Nor good at all again | |
| For curb of heart or fret? | |
| Nay, though, by grace, | |
| Lest haply I refuse God to His face, | 25 |
| Their likeness wholly I forget, | |
| Ah! yet, | |
| Often in straits which else for me were ill, | |
| I mind me still | |
| I did respire the lonely auras sweet, | 30 |
| I did the blest abodes behold, and, at the mountains’ feet, | |
| Bathed in the holy Stream by Hermon’s thymy hill. | | | | |
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